Элизабет Мун - Moon Flights

“Er… no,” Gerard said. Traveling with empties made no profit. Gerard had made sure they were all full.

“Mmm.” Arnie was unsealing canisters as he thought; Gerard followed his example, pulling out the good cheeses and then setting the lids back on to contain—at least a little—the stinking mess below. Twice, Gerard had to pull Moro out of a canister before he could put the lid on.

“We could move the Gumbone too, pack containers tight-full of it, and that would give us some empties for the CraigsHollow—”

“Canisters’d have to be cleaned, Gerry. I dunno what would get this stink out of ’em.” Arnie popped another canister lid. “I guess it’s better than nothing, though.”

Gerard started reopening lids he’d set back, stuffing Gumbone lumps into the space left by CraigsHollow wheels and then resealing the canisters. Even through the suit filters, he could smell the Gumbone.

“Why would anyone even make this stuff?” he said. “And why does the cat like it?”

“Dunno,” Arnie said. “What I heard is, the people back there eat it before it stinks so bad and they say it’s really good. Cats—can’t ever tell with cats why they like some smells. You’re lucky Moro likes you and the captain. He don’t like everybody, and if he don’t like you, he leaves marks.”

“Moro? Bites people? Scratches?”

Arnie chuckled. “There’s that, but there’s worse. Years ago, we had this young captain. The cat we had then, Sally, hated him. He was a difficult sort, we found out, but Sally was hissing at him and peeing on his bed before he’d done anything. Puked in his shoes, used the captain’s chair for a toilet. He hated her as much as she hated him; he finally threw her out the airlock—”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Not a nice young man at all.”

“Who is it? Is he still around?”

Arnie looked around, then shook his head. “I don’t like to say. Not good to start rumors.”

Gerard changed topics. “I was thinking… if Moro likes the smell so much, maybe we could market it—”

“As a cat-finder? For what you paid for it?”

“Cat food, Arnie. I know it’s not hard to find cats…”

“You don’t know it wouldn’t make cats sick.”

“Right.” Gerard pushed Moro out of the way again. “It’s interesting he’s not trying to get into the CraigsHollow cheeses, even though they must smell a lot like this stuff by now.”

“To us, maybe. He’s a cat.”

“Has anyone ever analyzed Gumbone? Seen if it has anything… you know… salable in there?”

“Not that I know of. It doesn’t travel well, you see…” Arnie snickered.

Gerard repressed a desire to throw a lump of Gumbone at his back. He was an adult now, a cargomaster according to the personnel list; he couldn’t give way to boyish impulses.

Finally the transfer of Gumbone produced enough empty canisters for all the CraigsHollow Premium, and they had sealed and double-taped the lids on the others, to Moro’s annoyance. The stench hadn’t diminished. Gerard called Baris. “We need to clean the canisters we’ve emptied of Gumbone, so we can put the good cheese in those. We’d only need to open the hatch for a minute; we can use the crew decontam just down the passage—”

“No, you cannot!” Baris said. “Decontam dumps watermass outside, and we’re in FTL. No external openings, remember?”

Now he felt really stupid. He’d been on a ship before; he should have remembered that. “Well… where, then?”

“How valuable are those CraigsHollow cheeses? Really worth the trouble of saving them?”

“Yes,” Gerard said. “If we can get even an ordinary price for them, it’ll help get us out of the red.”

“All right. In ten minutes, I’ll have a stack of sealable bags outside your hold hatch. You’re suited—unsuit inside, seal your suits, then bring your stuff out. Put it in the bags. Take it all to the big washroom, and before you repack it, wash the insides of the bags as well. Run your clothes through the vac unit. Use a sniffer—as long as you’ve been in there, your noses are probably saturated.” She clicked off.

“Do we take the good cheese?” Arnie asked.

“Might as well,” Gerard said. “We can at least rinse it down.” They loaded the CraigsHollow into the empty canisters, put the canisters on a load-hauler, and moved everything near the hatch.

Gerard tried not to breathe as he unsuited, but he had to take several breaths… impossible to believe that anyone ever actually ate Gumbone. Soon they were out in the passage, moving the loadhauler upship. When they arrived in the washroom Baris was there.

“I could smell you coming all the way down the passage,” she said. “I’ve already installed special equipment in the water system to handle any spores or anything.”

Washing down the containers and the bags took another hour, because Baris insisted on checking every single one for residual contamination.

“And your clothes,” she said, when they were down to the CraigsHollow pile. “No, not the cheeses… I’m still considering whether it’s a good idea to rinse them off—”

“We have to do something about them—” Gerard began.

“Right now what you have to do is your clothes,” Baris said. “Off with them.”

Arnie was already half-stripped; Gerard ran a finger under the closure of his shipsuit, feeling like a little boy whose mother had found him wallowing in a mud puddle. Baris could at least leave them alone for this… but environmental security was her responsibility. Sighing, he handed over his clothes and walked through the scrubber. On the far side, he pulled a clean shipsuit off the rack and put it on.

“I’m worried that rinsing these cheeses could damage them,” Baris said.

“They’re wrapped,” Arnie said. “We’re not even sure the spores could get in.”

“The wrapping could have sensors built in—change color if water touches them, something like that. I put in a call to Kerry, in Engineering; he’s on the way with some specialized equipment.”

Kerry and Stavros showed up together. “What’s going on?” Stavros asked. Kerry crouched over the pile of cheeses.

“Trying to save the profit,” Gerard said. Engineering hadn’t been his strong point during his apprentice voyage; he had no idea what instrument Kerry was using. He focused instead on Stavros. “We have four canisters’ worth of the CraigsHollow. If we can sell it at the next stop—”

“Allray? I don’t think that’s our best bet, not with so little. If we had forty canisters, I’d say yes. When we left Craigomar, the market price at Allray was fifty two five. You paid twenty five each for the forty—our net on just four would put us seven hundred ninety in the hole, not counting transport costs.”

“Definitely sensors in the wrap,” Kerry said, standing up. “Captain, I’d advise against any tampering, and that includes the use of water. There are at least five sensor suites in the wrapping of each cheese. Temperature, moisture, mechanical—that would be unwrapping or cutting the seal, a pH check, and one I’m not sure of. Quality merchandise, quality security.”

“Which close contact with the Gumbone may already have compromised,” Gerard said.

“If it hasn’t,” Stavros said, “there’s a hot market—or was when we left—for exotic foodstuffs on Corland. CraigsHollow cheese was starred. Two zero six per canister.”

Gerard felt a gleam of hope. Still in the hole but not as much, and maybe the price would have risen in the meantime. “And that’s only thirty days station to station from Allray—”

“Since we’re supplementary to the regular Vatta service, we don’t have to do more at Allray than drop off the consignments and pick up anything that’s shown up for Corland. We can be in and out in less than a day.” Stavros grinned. He punched Gerard lightly on the shoulder.